DANE 101 - 1st Year Danish

Thorough grammatical foundation in idiomatic Danish with emphasis on both reading and speaking the language.

NORW 101 - 1st Year Norwegian

Thorough grammatical foundation in idiomatic Norwegian with emphasis on both reading and speaking the language.

SWED 101 - 1st Year Swedish

Thorough grammatical foundation in idiomatic Swedish with emphasis on both reading and speaking.

FINN 199 - Conversation (M. Stern)

SCAN 199 - Conversation

Meets one afternoon (one hour) per week. Meeting time and place to be determined by class participants.

FINN 201 - 2nd Year Finnish (J. Librett)

This course reviews grammar, composition, and conversation and incorporates readings from various texts in Finnish. The course offers practice in reading, writing and speaking of idiomatic Finnish through weekly essays based on authentic texts of gradually increasing difficulty, web resources, as well as Finnish audio and video materials. Students gain a familiarization with Finnish history and culture by viewing Finnish films; observing Finnish "flag days," devoted to notable Finnish cultural personalities or historical events; reading Finnish magazine articles in Finnish; listening to Finnish music. The emphasis is on reviewing grammar and speaking. Class activities include regular assignments in the textbook, word games, short skits, composition of short poems, and weekly quizzes.

NORW 201 - 2nd Year Norwegian (B. Lode)

This course builds upon the skills developed in the first year Norwegian sequence. Emphasis is placed on further developing skills in oral production and reception as well as written production and reception. The primary goal of the course is to improve students' communicative capability in Norwegian. This is accomplished through regular conversation and composition in Norwegian as well as the review of grammatical structures. Additionally, students will gain familiarity with the cultural context in which the language is spoken through reading and discussing various texts in Norwegian.

SWED 201 - 2nd Year Swedish (H. Bagdade)

This course builds upon the skills developed in the first year Swedish sequence. Our emphasis falls on the further development of the student?s ability to produce and comprehend Swedish. The student will be asked to produce language through speaking and writing, and to receive it through listening and reading. The primary goal of the course is to improve the student?s ability to communicate in the target language. This is accomplished through regular conversation and composition in Swedish as well as an intensive review of grammatical structures. Though the student will be given the opportunity to refine her language skills through the reproduction of everyday speech situations, students will be given additional material that enables them to gain familiarity with the cultural context in which Swedish is spoken. Therefore we will read and discuss various Swedish texts, including dialogs, short narratives, and newspaper articles.

SCAN 251 :: Text and Interpretation: Masks and Ecstatic Experience (M. Stern)

This is our foundational course, which defines the scope of what Scandinavian Studies is at the UO. It serves as an introduction to critical thinking as well. The course is designed to prompt an interrogation of mere appearances. This questioning of the superficial will be enacted through the close reading of a series of texts and films that highlight the difficulty of interpretation. The goal is to develop the critical thinking skills that enable students to read more accurately their experiences and environments. With this goal in mind, the course will introduce students to a number of works that use masks and tell tales of ecstatic experiences. The masks can be as simple as a pseudonym or as subtle as formal aesthetic choices. The initial premise is that masks are used to depict ecstatic experience (traumatic events, religious passion, sexual desire, and the like) because these experiences are transformative, and that the face of transformation, the appearance of becoming, needs the mask in order to be legible. While this course is an introduction to a way of thinking critically about cultural production, it also serves as an introductory survey to the art, literature and film of Scandinavia. In it we will learn to read, analyze, and write about short stories, plays, novels, and philosophy. We will also view several films. In this way, the student will experience a representative sample of Scandinavian cultural production after 1800 and learn about the context in which these cultural artifacts were produced. The class is conducted in English.

This course satisfies the both the Arts and letters group and the International Cultures requirements.

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SCAN 325 - Scandinavia Beyond: Literary Identity and Storytelling (G. Gurley)

Scandinavia is a land rich in storytelling traditions. Through this extraordinary array of literary crafts we will explore questions of cultural unity and hybridity, gender, ethnicity, exploration, and regional identity. Beginning with the popular misconception that Scandinavia is a homogenous, insular, and inward-looking society, we will consider ways in which Scandinavia and Scandinavians define themselves by looking outward. This outward/inward model will be a metaphor for the class as we first embark on the Viking discovery of the New World. From there we will consider the oral traditions of the North in order to understand the relationship between identity and storytelling. In the Romantic and Modern periods we will see how ethnicity and the notions of regionalism and linguistic difference - - all inward-looking gestures - - help define the notion of peripherality. We will then apply this notion to a new narrative tradition as we watch several Scandinavian film s by directors of Middle-Eastern origin. Finally, the class will come full circle when we examine the nautical exploits of one of the greatest Scandinavian s to ever live and the 20 th - century obsession with the narrative of origins.

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SCAN 340 - The Hero and the Monster in Medieval Scandinavian and Germanic Literature (G. Gurley)

Medieval Germanic tradition has given Western literature some of its most provocative and productive heroes. These figures populate the literary landscape of the North as some of the most sophisticated expressions of human ideals. In this course, we will look not only at the ever changing and refining display of heroes, but also at their unsung counterparts : the monsters they encounter, the monsters they are haunted by, and the monsters they become. Considering both figures as expressions of cultural aesthetics and prohibition, we will trace the evolution of heroics and monstrosity from early narrative poetry to the heyday of the Skaldic Sagas and then into the twilight of saga production where continental and courtly notions of heroism start to displace the innovative, indigenous models.

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